The focus of this booklet is on the method of teaching. Mr. Crotty goes through the timeless and time-tested Jesuit philosophy of education and applies it to homeschooling. He has put together an outline that could be successfully applied to any curriculum. The ideas will be especialy helpful for parents who are homeschooling their teens, but it is useful to consider such important goals even when our children are very young.. Although it's a short booklet, the reading is rather heavy. I think you'll find it well worth the effort. Mr.

Book two begins to offer stories and poems that are enjoyable and worthwhile reading in their own right such as The Christ Child by G.K. Chesterton, The Honest Woodman, several Saint stories (Blessed Imelda, St. Teresa the Little Flower, St. Francis and the Wolf) and other short stories, folk tales and fairy stories.

The Bob Books and subsequent titles (five sets of small reading booklets in all) are sets of very small, stapled booklets with black and white line drawings and colorful covers, which contain very simple stories. They are approximately $15 per set (although I've seen them at Sam's Club and Half-Price books for less). Each set comes in a colorful box with two little cardboard finger puppets and a cardboard puppet theatre.

This second set was just released and wasn't around when I taught my oldest to read. Although she did fine without it, I thought that the additional practice on this basic level was very helpful for my son (who has just finished this second set). Like the first set, the stories are designed entirely for the purpose of practicing beginning reading skills by introducing sounds in an intelligent order. The stories are very simple and usually quite silly. This set does introduce several two-letter phonograms - "ar" (book 3), "aw" (book 3) "ow" (book 4), "ou" (book 7), "oo" (book 12).